Alwaght- Russian foreign minister says the US is trying to protect al-Qaeda linked al-Nusra terrorist group to use them as a tool to overthrow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“There is a slew of examples showing that al-Nusra Front somehow evaded the US-led coalition’s actions,” Lavrov said in the Serbian capital of Belgrade on Monday, referring to the coalition of countries bombarding alleged terrorist positions in Syria and Iraq.
“There were and are solid reasons to believe it (al-Nusra) was being protected as the most efficient and combat-capable anti-government force on the ground so that it could be used in the future to topple the legitimate leadership of Syria,” Lavrov added.
Al-Nusra Front has recently renamed itself and claimed to have broken ranks with al-Qaeda, although there is general consensus that the moves are decoy attempts.
The US-led coalition has achieved little, if anything, to dislodge the terrorist groups it claims to be fighting.
Earlier, the Russian foreign minister had described the movement of ISIS terrorists from the northern Iraqi city of Mosul to neighboring Syria and a subsequent attack on the ancient city of Palmyra as a part of an orchestrated plan to salvage terrorist groups in Syria’s strategic northwestern city of Aleppo.
“It makes me think, and I hope I am wrong, that it is all orchestrated in order to give a respite to the bandits still in eastern Aleppo,” Lavrov said.
Syrian and Russian militaries are engaged in the final phases of a large-scale operation to retake Aleppo from militants, including those of al-Nusra.
